Lessons from Pulwama terror attack: Look inwards

Thursday’s suicide attack on a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), in which more than 40 force personnel got killed, comes as a grim reminder that all is not well in Kashmir.

The attack carried out by a suicide bomber of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militant group, who rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a bus on Jammu-Srinagar national highway near Lethpora in south Kashmir is the bloodiest in J&K’s nearly three decade old militancy. Minutes after the attack was carried out, JeM claimed the responsibility of the attack and uploaded a video of the militant Adil Ahmad, a local youth who carried out the attack, disclosing that he was “waiting for this moment to come.”

For the past several months, particularly after the state of J&K came under Governor’s rule and subsequently President’s rule, the governments from Srinagar to New Delhi have been claiming that situation in Kashmir was inching towards normalcy. Under operation “All Out”, the security forces killed scores of militants including some top militant leaders. It seemed that finally the security grid had established an upper hand and militants were on the run. Interestingly the fresh recruitment into militant ranks, that had shown upward trend following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen’s Burhan Wani in 2016, also came down and so did the street protests.

On 3rd February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited J&K and inaugurated several developmental projects. Speaking at a function in Srinagar, he talked tough and declared, “My government will break the backbone of terrorism.” And after 11 days, Kashmir witnessed the worst and bloodiest terror attack of its history.

After the launch of operation “All Out”, militants in Kashmir were on the defensive. With the elimination of their top leaders, they were demoralised and to add insult to the injury, government’s repeated assertions that the situation was normalising in the state, was pushing them to the wall. They were desperate to do something that would help them bounce back and they succeeded in doing so on February 14. The attack seemed to have twin motives. One, to belie government’s claims of normalcy, two, to boost the morale of their rank and file. And they achieved both.

The attack has attracted global condemnation and from UN to US, Pakistan to China, almost all the countries have condemned the attack. The political leadership in J&K, cutting across ideological divides, has also strongly condemned that attack. Even separatist leaders – Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik have regretted the killings.

It is for the first time that separatists have commented about the killing of security force. The separatist leaders, who claim to strive for a political resolution of Kashmir issue, realise that such attacks take away the political argument from Kashmiris as globally it would be seen nothing less than a terror attack.

One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that lots of planning would have gone into Thursday’s attack. The militant group JEM would have been planning it for quite some time to make it the deadliest one. And the question here arises, what was the intelligence grid doing? Highly placed sources have claimed that there were inputs suggesting militants were planning to do something on Jammu-Srinagar highway. If these sources are to be believed, it was undoubtedly a serious security lapse and the government of the day would do well to the state as well as to the nation by fixing responsibility.

It is true that JeM has owned the responsibility. It is true that JeM is based in Pakistan and a Pakistani national Azhar Mehmood is heading it and pulling strings from there. It is a no brainer to suggest that India needs to send a strong message to Pakistan and build diplomatic pressure on it. But that is not enough.

New Delhi also needs to look inwards. It needs to appreciate that there are some problems which are exclusively between New Delhi and Kashmir. Launching operations like “All Out” is fine but use of muscle alone can’t resolve the issue. New Delhi needs to take political initiatives to engage separatists.

It would be naïve to think that the Modi government will be keen to take any political initiative during the election season but if Kashmir is to be brought back from the brink, whosoever forms the government in New Delhi after the general elections, will have to open communication links with separatists.

Kashmiri youths are living a life of hopelessness and this hopelessness pushes them towards such a state of mind where they kill and willingly get killed. New Delhi has to give them hope and convey to them that they would get a hearing. The sooner the better.

(The writer is editor, Kashmir Images, Srinagar)